Shane Beamer breaks down the good and bad in South Carolina's first fall scrimmage
In every stop in Shane Beamer’s coaching career, he’s noticed that the defense usually performs better than the offense in the first fall scrimmage. And that’s not necessarily hard to believe.
On Saturday, South Carolina played its first scrimmage since starting fall camp last week. There was a lot good things that Beamer took away from the group’s first outing. But there were also some things that still have room for improvement. And it starts with an offense that still has work to do.
“I felt like we had some self-inflicted things that today from an offensive stand point that will lose football games, whether it be drops or some penalties,” Beamer said. “You’ve got a drive going and then you have a penalty that backs you up. So that’s stuff today we can correct.”
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Beamer pointed out there weren’t a lot of players who scored in the scrimmage. He said freshman tight end Michael Smith caught a touchdown and freshman running back Matthew Fuller ran one in from about two yards out. Besides that, there were a lot of good drives that were stalled out by some mistakes.
“We had some drives that we didn’t finish, whether we got in scoring territory and missed a field goal. We got in scoring territory and had some negative yardage plays on offense that took us out of field goal range,” he said.
For what it’s worth, the offense not being able to find the end zone consistently meant the defense did its job. It’s almost a double-edged sword in a way. While the offense had some momentum-building drives, the defense stepped up when it mattered most more times than not.
“I thought our guys did a good job overall of moving the football,” Beamer said. “I thought our defense did a great job when the offense got down in the red zone, maybe had an explosive play and the defense responded the right way.”
It may sound like the Gamecocks didn’t have a great day on offense, but that’s not entirely the case. Beamer said there was only one turnover, an interception caught by freshman defensive back Isaiah McClary. In addition, there weren’t many pre-snap penalties, which is something that certainly hindered the offense last season.
“I think it was 103 total plays, so to have very few pre-snap penalties, that’s a good thing, especially out there in that heat,” Beamer said. “Now we’ve got to be better about making sure we don’t have the holding penalties and the hands to the face, some of that stuff we had today that are critical penalties.”
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Beamer was also happy with how much work the team got in on Saturday. As he said, they were able to run more than 100 total plays, which was a good sign all things considered.
“That doesn’t mean we’re all of a sudden this up-tempo offense going fast. I’m not saying that,” Beamer said. “Our guys were just very efficient getting out of the huddle and getting reps and getting on and off the field.”
For a first scrimmage, it went about as expected from what Beamer saw. Certainly some good things on both sides of the ball. At the same time, there were those first scrimmage mishaps that are common with the season opener still a few weeks out. Beamer said South Carolina will scrimmage again next weekend and hopes to see how the team improves from this weekend to the next.
“Offensively, there’s no question we have to do a better job of finishing drives and making sure we’re not doing things that beat ourselves cause we certainly had a lot of that last year,” he said. “Those guys that were out there, saw enough. … I’ll be very eager to see how the offense responds this week before we go into next Saturday’s opportunity to get back out there in the stadium.”
